Belly Rubs and Butt Scratches

Imagine a dark room, with no doors or windows. The room is completely dark; no way light can get in. You are locked in this room and, you are alone. You can feel the walls but never find a way out. Now imagine you began feeling your feet getting wet, then your knees, up to your hips, now your neck, and finally you are completely submerged in water. You cannot see and the pressure from the water makes it impossible to breathe, but you never die. You are alone in darkness and submerged in water; you are suffering. This is what a depressive episode feels like for me when it first begins and I never know when the darkness and suffocating pressure is coming; sometimes it is slow other times it is like someone threw me into that dark room. This is the main reason I refer to my mental illnesses as “my darkness”, it is literally how it feels…complete lonely empty darkness.

As time goes on. I get my medicine adjusted. I go through counseling sessions which causes the water to slowly start to recede and the walls of the darkness begin to crack and, then I slowly start to turn back into my normal self. However, this can take days, weeks, or months. As a result this has caused more than one person to turn their back on me and lose patience with me. The people who really love you and care about will stick with you through every episode, every outburst, and every tear; those are the people you want to surround yourself with. Surround yourself with people who drain the water and crack the darkness. You will meet people who will build the walls and add the water and these are the people to stay away from. Feeling what having an anxiety attack is like, is a little bit harder to explain. Anxiety attacks usually do not come on slowly but hit me like a mac truck on the freeway. Everyone’s anxiety attacks feel different; please remember as you read this, this my unique experience. I know an anxiety attack is coming when I begin to feel an intense pressure on my back, it feels like a grown person is trying to take a piggy back ride against my will and I cannot shake them off. When I first started having anxiety attacks I did not know what this meant and I would then go into full blown attacks. Now that I know I am able to take my anxiety medication and have it under better control. Once I am in a full blown anxiety, I cannot stop scratching, legs, arms, scalp…anywhere that I can scratch I do. It has been to the point with my anxiety that I have scratched both my legs and arms open, usually I use the excuse that one of my dogs got me with their toenails, only few close people knew otherwise. The hardest part of explaining an anxiety attack is explaining how it feels on the inside. Imagine a sunken ship, the Titanic is a perfect example. Imagine the rust accumulating on the ship and deterioration that the ship has gone through. Now imagine those are your bones, which is what it feels like on the inside during an anxiety attack like my bones are rusting and deteriorating away. I have tried to explain this feeling to countless people and I always get the same puzzled look, but if it is something you have experienced you know that it is almost crippling. Since I have been diagnosed I have worked full time and I have had to work through these attacks, always pretending I am okay. Some people began to catch on, these people pretended to by my friends and said they always wanted to help me fight. However, these people learned the signs which lead them to manipulate me by using my anxiety against me, making me yell or become downright belligerent. These are people to stay away from, they will suck the life from you; these people are toxic to you and your mental health. Having someone turn an anxiety attack against you is like someone holding underneath the water and then saying you drowned by not knowing how to swim. This is what my experience with anxiety is like, and I have regretted the fact that I have let people have such control over me.